Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The speaker is an unidentified human observing the animals around him or her.
Form and Meter
The poem is written in free verse, composed of a quintet, a single-line stanza, and a sestet. Most lines rhyme, sharing an "O" ending.
Metaphors and Similes
Millay uses simile to compare falling snow to a feather, and uses metaphor to compare the buck's blood to heat or fire with the word "scalding."
Alliteration and Assonance
The alliterative repetition in the phrase “standing in the apple-orchard? I saw them. I saw them suddenly go” creates a hissing, fluid sound that mimics the deers' movement, while L sounds in the following phrase "Tails up, with long leaps lovely and slow" maintain that same fluidity. Alliterative F sounds in the phrase "letting fall a feather of snow" evoke the softness and silence of the falling snow.
Irony
There is a subtle situational irony in the poem's final lines: the unexpectedness of the doe's vitality contrasts with the violence of the buck's death.
Genre
Nature poetry
Setting
A snowy, pastoral landscape where human and animal habitation meet
Tone
Contemplative and philosophical
Protagonist and Antagonist
The buck and doe are protagonists, while death itself is an antagonist
Major Conflict
The conflict is metaphorical, between living creatures—or life itself—and death.
Climax
The poem's climax comes midway through, in the single-line stanza where the buck's death is revealed.
Foreshadowing
The phrase "white sky," with its suggestion of blankness, lightly foreshadows the arrival of oblivion and death.
Understatement
“Now lies he here" is an understated way to convey the suddenness, violence, and drama of the buck's death.
Allusions
The presence specifically of apple trees in the orchard and a male and female deer suddenly rushing away can be read as allusions to the biblical story of the garden of Eden.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
“Bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers” metonymically depict the downfall of the buck.
Personification
The speaker directly asks the “White sky” if it witnessed the deer in the orchard, personifying it. They also describe the trees as "bowed."
Hyperbole
The phrase "Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe" somewhat hyperbolically locates the concept of life itself within the image of the doe's eyes.
Onomatopoeia
N/A
